(no subject)

[kingtycoon]

Taking Tiger Mountain

-        an interlude

Having come to the peak of the untried mountain, the lone peak at the brink of the River Shrike, the adventurers were confronted all at once by many strange realities- true facts as confirmed by the senses that defied all sense and normal awareness.   The facts – unassailable true facts, as noted by brash-bold Glib Ladrón :

1 – Some people are mostly Tiger, not people, not tiger – but a mixture of the two that could not possibly bear any relationship to natures intentions.

2 – Sometimes some kind of sickness or malady overtakes these tiger-people and arm-length silverfish fall out of their mouths – along with an unhealthy quantity of blood.

3- Some people are fortunately capable of not only tolerating these turns of events, but actually thrive in these circumstances and do not hesitate to act.

Such people are called Adventurers – and Glib Ladrón is very pleased to have found within himself that he can be counted among their number.

What transpired on the sun-parched peak was this: The people (not quite yet actually adventurers – for they’d not at that point accepted the shift in perception and acceptance required to be so known) had gone up the mountain owing to the vaguely allied motivations for money and knowledge and excitement. Said Glib Ladrón – “No one has yet returned from attempting the hill, so at the very least whatever they’ve left up there is ours for the taking.” Said Ib the Erythraean: “I trust my Buster Sword against any danger on that hill.” Said Map Rith: “A ghost dream done spoke in my guts once and I heard tell that at the high points is the realm whereat the dream goes down and teaches.” Said Submot Jon Duilin: “Perhaps there are answers to be found?” So with an uncertain diffidence they’d gone up the hill, not prepared exactly, but equipped with luck and resourcefulness – they attempted to do what was said to be undoable- go up and the hill and come back again.

          At the sun-parched peak they became adventurers. Confronted at first by the peculiar abomination – men with tails, whiskers, fur and stripes, tigers with hands that walked upright, that spoke barely-human language. This was strange, but merely strange. A danger, for certain – they approached, ready to fight for their lives, the tiger-men symmetrically arrayed – ready for death and killing. By good fortune the Tiger-men’s language was near enough to the dialects of Erythraea that stalwart Ib could – in fits and starts – carry out a halting conversation. Truce was declared.

Nearly as suddenly though, the peculiarity of the tiger-men was diminished by the much more extravagant strangeness of whatever afflicted them. Sickened- Ib’s interlocutor doubled over, heaved once, twice – and blood and gore poured out of his mouth – along with a dangling, living thing- a parasitic insect looking like a gigantic silverfish. With a quick blow of his Buster Sword Ib the Erythraean held himself in the highest account – ending the tiger-man’s misery and crippling the parasite in a prelude to stamping it’s life out on the dust of ancient ruins.

Such demonstrations of course were sufficient to cow the tiger-men to appropriate timidity – realizing at once that the ones who had comme to them were in fact Adventurers – bold and daring, who would not quietly die and who would not shrink before the threat of danger. So, they took them all to their camp.

The Tiger-men though, are and were more tiger than man. They could, with coaxing and demonstration, be made used to the comforts of a camp, the warmth of a fire – but in their native state – they shunned the accoutrements of even rudimentary civilization. And yet they had a camp. Not theirs – but captured, taken. By force and strength and brutal murder the Tiger-men had taken the camp on the hill from the previous denizens – grave-robbers. Inheriting the grave-robbers camp, they likewise inherited their prisoner – Stark Merriweather, wizard and passable linguist.

Having lived for a time among the brutes, Stark had some intelligence to relay – and was not sparing with the details:

“The Tiger-men had come among the ruins for reasons that they themselves could not fathom. They explained these things in their own terms – relating to the challenging scents of rival packs, of the game trails, of the pleasing sweet water from the river and the drought of the highlands. They have no reason for being here, and yet they wish to go to across the river. They came here and killed and ate my previous captors – a gang of grave robbers who were defiling the graves, those graves – over there. Once they’d killed and eaten the robbers they took some notice of me, but I could understand and speak to them so they accepted me, immediately – they’re simple creatures, but very dangerous – do not provoke them.” This last warning advice he offered as he left the mountain with the Wizardess Ekaterina – making for the river and Hundown beyond – taking with him all the grave-robbers’ plunder – of which the tiger-men had no use or awareness.

But the circumstances relating to the tiger-men were interesting enough a puzzle to compel Submot Jon Dulin to stay a while among them on the peak. More than that, the creatures were sick, mostly ill and suffering – apparently from whatever malady caused their fellow to cough up a monster. He prayed for insight, such being his normal recourse.

          Glib Ladrón though was compelled, not by the tiger-men – who after all were just big kitty-cats, harmless if treated appropriately – rather he had his eyes upon the ruins themselves. An ancient place built by the elf-kings of old an ancient, extinct culture – rumored to be rich. He busied himself among the graves, searching out treasure, considering the facts of life – that coin ensures autonomy, that money sustains life.

          Map-Rith, the cursed Halfling did his own reconnaissance – finding the deep square pit in the middle of the ruin, the echoing, cold depth beyond, something beneath the earth that answered calls with a familiar, dull ring, that spoke back to him. His own ghost? In the pit? Perhaps? He cried out again and again – questions begging an answer. The tiger-men crept close as he did so – expecting something. For long minutes the calls remained unanswered and then? Bursting from the stillness came a fluttering and a whirlwind – dozens or hundreds of moths – butterflies – something – burst from the hole – each as big as Map-Rith’s fist. He caught one just as the tiger-men leapt to gather them in their mouths, eating them with gusto. The thing – not a butterfly but a fleshy polyp – like a tadpole, but with six broad tails – fluttering like dragonfly wings. No face, mouth, nothing resembling eyes – only a squishy transparent green frog-flesh – the guts swirling inside. Knowing well enough his own limitations Map Rith brought the thing to Submot Dulin “Is it a taboo food or a right food br’er Dulin?” With tempered wisdom the Submot crushed the thing beneath the butt of his jinglestaff. “Don’t eat it.” And so he was granted the wisdom he had prayed for.

          And Stalwart Ib? Favorite of the tiger-men? He had gone aside with them, left the camp for the pleasant basking rocks under the sparse trees where they could speak together uninterrupted. The Raksasha of Gotra-Hinsra-Purūṣa was a noble creature, a very large tiger with two human hands- curled up and backward on its forelegs – to enable it’s nimble clambering on all fours. It spoke to him and gave no name – for the Gotra-Hinsra-Purūṣa do not follow that human practice. The Raksasha, matriarch of the pack explained to him her purpose and the needs of her people, their history and their lineage.

          “long ago,” she said, purring and shoving her great cat’s head under his palm, all the two-legs races left the North. When the crace leaves but some remain are they a part of a race? They did not think so. Some among them were witches gifted with the power of shape-changing. These chose new breeds to join and became Hinsra-Purūṣa and Kīmatī-Rūvāṁ and Bhāva-Sāpa and others, the More-Than-Three. Their two-legs ways would not leave their blood though and some among their progeny began to become the Gotra – So the More-Than-Three came to be – all shades and aspects of the beast-man path. “

          Satisfied, Ib went to consult with the others only to discover Jon Dulin, performing his priestly incantations over the sickened and failing Hinsra-Purūṣa bringing them back, one by one, from their mortal peril, saving them, one by onne, from their grizzly fate. “Tell them to stop eating those butterfly things from the ground Mister Ib – that’s what’s made them so sick.”

A few nights, on Tiger Mountain were required for Submot Jon Dulin to see to the afflictions of all Gotra-Hinsra-Purūṣa. Time the submot spent in serious prayer, inward contemplation and the laying on of hands. The Erythraean Ib, mastering the Raksasha of the Gotra by force of his overwhelming potency, his stoic patience – came to learn more and more of them and their ways, simple-minded, straightforward. Complex in turns but unambiguous. They pleaded with him gently, as they grew in trust, to help them cross the river. They had tired of the mountain and the thinning game, they could not turn away from the West, which compelled them – somehow – but they feared the river and had not met its like in the life of the Gotra.

          Map Rith and Glib Ladrón though, they had to choose their own way of whiling away their time on the mountain. Go back to the village? Not yet, too light in the pockets still, go down the hole? Not without a wizard, not yet. Dig up the bodies of the fallen, ancient elves? Perhaps a little. Explore the ruin, find the secrets? Why not, sure. Climbing the crumbling walls and venturing through the ruined upper levels was not difficult, but it did, certainly, offer its own danger – a fall would be deadly, a collapse likewise. Yet, among the elf-hall’s ruins there was an amount of worthy loot to be had, among the graves as well there were… items, wrapped in the skeletal elf-remains. “Enough to survive a while longer, sure, but not enough to retire on, no.” Glib Ladrón ’s pronouncement. I suppose we’re adventurer’s now though Map my lad – we’ll need to get gear enough to keep on the path, and gear means town and town means people – we’ll go back to them, but I don’t mind telling you – I’ve figured out a thing or two about them, the people.”

          For among the ruins there were hints and secrets about the townsfolk – graffiti and remembrances, signs of the townsfolk’s comings and goings among the elf-ruins – which they’d after all said – none had returned from. An old diary of Almond Sister – the apothecary, a few broken jack-o-lanterns, rotten and charred in the halls leading to a vaulted, open chamber – and in that chamber? A great – tall carving – a cult statue – as confirmed by Submot Dulin. A woman, all covered in fur, well carved and statuesque, sprouting from her head – some ten feet aboe the dais – great huge antlers like the largest of the northern moose. And draped over her horns there were garlands of popcorn, and woven braids of cornsilk and at her feet were stacked the denuded maize-cobs, dried and shaped into human-like dolls.

          “What do you think it means?” Jon Dulin asked, having been brought to the eerie shrine on the fourth night.

          “They been dreamin the bad dream or the good but nones the wiser. If they got a ghost in them then it must come out and be playtiming with the horn-lady.”

          “My friends, the way that one wins in a negotiation or similar interaction is by knowing something about the other party that they do not know that you know.”

          “Asymmetry in force deployment is like asymmetry in knowledge – it does not mean victory Glib Ladrón .”

          “Oh, but it helps out doesn’t it Ib?”